13 Years !!!

It actually doesn’t come as a surprise to any of us who are well informed about foster care in these United States. Even so, it is still possible to surprise me never-the-less. NPR described today that LINK>Texas could face fines over dysfunctional foster care system. Texas has been in litigation over its foster care system for nearly 13 years. A federal court is now weighing whether to impose hefty fines over the system’s inability to make progress.

Not only Texas but America’s foster system is in crisis. Sadly, Texas’ network is among the most troubled. NPRs story includes details of self-harm by one foster care youth – “I always get judged for my arms.” NPR notes – The 18-year-old’s left arm is covered in scar tissue from hundreds of self-inflicted cuts.

She explains – “people didn’t want to keep me. Or I feel like people didn’t want anything to do with me because I look like I’m insane. But in all reality, we’re not insane. We just are looking for somebody to love us.” NPR notes – Since she was 14, she spent her time being shuttled between treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals, often changing doctors and medications each time, never finding stability. So now, more than a dozen placements and 230 different medications later, she says the state’s child welfare system is a lie.

Children without placement hotels exist because Texas doesn’t have enough places for children, the ones with high mental health needs. Federal court monitors call these placements dangerous, noting in its reports times when kids got assaulted, ran away or were sex trafficked. And for more than three years, what was supposed to be a temporary placement for kids has often lasted for weeks or months. The state says it has cut the numbers of children without placement in half, but it’s still more than 100 kids a month. It’s cost $250 million over three years.

Texas has been aggressively refusing and opposing reform. It is a big system with lots of problems, but the state’s leadership is just not willing to work cooperatively to get it fixed or to find solutions. Federal District Judge Janis Jack calls the bureaucracy that produced these ongoing failures horrible. One in four caseworkers leave within a year of being hired. One person asks – “if state leaders can spend billions erecting barriers on Texas’ southern border, why can’t they fix this?”

NPR notes – Texas is not the only state to deal with legal fights over foster care. Alabama, Mississippi and Kansas have all dealt with federal oversight. Many still are. One former foster care youth says Child Protective Services (in Texas) was so bad that she would have rather stayed with her abusive family.

Legal Conflicts

Straight off, I will say that I am NOT in favor of gestational surrogacy. My primary objection is separating babies from the mother who’s womb they developed in. There is definitely an in-utero bond. I probably do know more families with donor conceived children than most ordinary citizens do. I know of situations where a surrogate was used. One in which the intended mother was actively undergoing chemotherapy at the time her twins were born and who did die when the twins were about 2 years old. They are being raised by their genetic father who donated the sperm in that assisted reproduction effort. I also know of a couple of women who simply didn’t want to wait any longer to have children with no husband in sight. They used both egg and sperm donations. BOTH carried their own children and I know them as awesome moms. These children are all 18 years old now including my youngest son.

The situation that inspired today’s blog regards couples from other countries entering into surrogacy contracts with women here in the United States. In this particular case, the intended parents have refused to come and get their twins for over a year now (they were born in February 2021). The surrogate and her husband are on the birth certificates as the parents but lack any legal custody because the surrogacy contract supersedes any hospital created birth certificate. The woman has both TikTok and Instagram accounts but both are private (possibly due to the legal complications) but I really don’t need to see them myself. The Instagram has a cute profile photo of the twins.

The United States is a destination country for couples who find they have to undergo surrogacy abroad due to the laws in their own country. Surrogacy is allowed in the United States for international patients by law. Not all of the states here are equally “friendly.” The website on LINK> International Surrogacy notes “surrogacy arrangements are legal in the following territories: Nevada, California, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Utah.” The states that ban surrogacy arrangements include Arizona, Michigan, New York, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, and Nebraska cautioning that surrogacy is even considered a criminal offence in some of them.

In the USA, a birth order is the legal document used to assign parentage to a child. These can be either a post- or pre-birth order that establishes the parental rights for the intended parents. This is key when undergoing surrogacy in the USA. Pre-birth orders can be started in the fourth month of pregnancy, whereas post-birth orders are granted on day 3 or 5 following the birth. This choice is very pricey for the intended parents – $95,000 to $290,000 – due in part to the fact that the US healthcare system is run by private businesses.

So back to our “trapped” surrogate and her husband. In order to have legal custody, they will have to go to court. They would have to sue for custody because simply being on the birth certificate doesn’t circumvent the surrogate contract in place. A complication of course is that they are not genetically related to these children and had no intention of parenting them to begin with. This even though they have been effectively raising these two babies for about a year. The intended parents have “broken” their contract but that doesn’t simply negate it legally.

Being a legal parent on a birth certificate does not always mean you have legal custody of your children – if there is another entity involved (like surrogacy, Div of Human Services/Child Protective Services with foster care, adoption until it is finalized, guardianship). It really depends on the country and this is the reason so many contracts, legal fees and lawyers are involved with situations such as surrogacy. Every situation is extremely unique.

Passing On One’s Genes

I distinctly remember when my husband first told me he wanted children. I came by today’s blog in a round-about way looking at infertility and narcissism (and see one of my own blogs showing up in a google search, oh my). Yet then I found this – I believe there is no good reason – other than vanity and narcissism – that an infertile couple should opt for IVF over adoption. Please CMV. (Change my view) by LINK> Javier Mosquera at Penn State.

This got my attention as both the choice to pursue IVF and issues of adoption matter to me. We briefly considered adoption and quickly ruled it out. Over 20 years ago, I didn’t know everything about adoption that I know today. I am very glad we didn’t go that route. But for the grace . . .

So Javier writes, “Today’s topic for my Passion Blog post comes from the subreddit LINK>‘changemyview.’ The complete prompt can be found there” at the link. Javier notes that “I will be following the subreddit’s Submission Rules for comments, to keep order and structure to my posts.”

[1] We live in a world where there are orphans in need of adoption to loving homes, and where loving couples cannot naturally conceive.

While this is true, it makes the assumption that the couples unable to conceive would provide the same love and support that parents of a functional home (whose first choice was adoption) could provide. Why risk letting a couple who obviously wanted their own offspring in the first place (and pursued adoption only after being unable to conceive) adopt a child who already may feel unwanted, only to continue the cycle? Such a child may grow up to harbor serious emotional problems, and live an unhappy life. Adoption should be left for those who genuinely want it, rather than for those who feel discouraged due to infertility.

[2] IVF is insanely expensive. And why force nature’s hand when there are simpler alternatives? And from what I understand, it’s not a 100% guarantee it would even work on top of that.

[3] Studies have shown that couples love their adopted child the same as their own “flesh-and-blood” child. Adoption even exists in the animal kingdom among some species. So I don’t buy the “but some people want to have ‘their own flesh and blood child’” argument, because all I hear from that is that you’re incredibly vain.

Here I will challenge two of your points, and while l concede with you, you must remember that it is our biological desire to put our DNA back into the gene pool. This is a product of evolution, with the purpose of keeping the human population alive. People want their own offspring, and furthermore, by doing so it is the best guarantee of leaving a contribution to mankind. Releasing one’s genes back into the playing field directly affects future generations. Indirectly, you may have gifted the world with the next Thomas Jefferson or Socrates. Your argument regarding expense would be valid for low-income families, but if one has the money, I don’t see any problem with someone attempting to pursue fostering children that has their own genetic code.

My young sons, maybe about the same age as Javier, are fans of Reddit (I don’t go there). My oldest who is now 21 claims he is never going to have children. I’m certainly not going to argue that with him. Though recently we did point out that my husband was 35 before he decided that he did want to have children after all. This is because my son is encouraging us to get rid of all this “kid stuff” that we have been saving for the day when our sons have children of their own. This son has always known from a very young age, his own mind, and has not been wrong any time he as asserted anything so important. I have to take him at his word.